Abstract:Maps on monthly total rainfall amount (in millimeters) and monthly rainfall percentage of normals 1961-1990 (in percentage) are available here for download from August 2004 to October 2008 for the African continent. Rainfall data are also available in GeoNetwork for the following Regions: Northern Africa, Western Africa, Eastern Africa and Southern Africa.
An interpolation method (Kriging) is applied to input data.
Data input for rainfall maps are provided by Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC) operated by the Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD, National Meteorological Service of Germany). GPCC First Guess Product, gauge-based gridded monthly precipitation data sets for the global land surface, at spatial resolutions of 1.0 x 1.0 degrees geographical latitude by longitude are used.
The First Guess Product of the monthly precipitation anomaly is based on interpolated precipitation anomalies from about 6,000 stations worldwide. Data sources are synoptic weather observation data (SYNOP) received at DWD via the WMO Global Telecommunication System (GTS) and climatic mean (mainly 1961-1990) monthly precipitation totals at the same stations extracted from GPCC s global normals collection. An automatic-only quality-control (QC) is applied to these data. Since September 2003, GPCC First Guess monthly precipitation analyses are available within 5 days after end of an observation month.